Blissful Ignorance
by Frostfyre
Summary: He promised to be there for her when her world fell down. J/S


**A/N: **Kind of sad, kind of dark, and definitely the hardest thing I've ever written. I'm not very good at romance - even the warped, twisted kind Jareth has for Sarah. Oh well. Enjoy. If it is kind of hard to follow, that is intentional.

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><p>It was (<em>unsurprisingly<em>) thirteen days after the (_Labyrinth…_) incident that she first saw him. Walking into school, unanimous and unnoticed (_distant and quiet… Few knew of not-Queen Sarah Williams…),_ she was just looking up at a tree when she noticed an owl perched on a branch. A brown-and-white barn owl. And it was looking (_glaring_) directly at her.

Him.

Her heart had sped up even as her stomach turned into a knotted mess, and a thin sheen of sweat broke out, leaving her chilled as the unseasonably cold wind picked up. Winter had come early to her little town, baffling newscasters who had declared that they would be having a mild season a mere day before the heavy snow and wind came.

So. He had power over the weather.

(_None over you…_)

Even as she saw him, she stumbled and looked away instinctively—she regained her balance—looked back up quickly—there was no owl. Nothing but cold, and snow, and grumbling teenagers as the world continued to go while Sarah's own had nearly broken.

(_Had nearly fallen…_)

The morning bell rang, and she pushed all thoughts of owls and falling worlds and unusual weather out of her mind. "You have no power over me," she said quietly, determinedly. Somewhere in the darkest reaches of her mind, she heard dark, evil laughter.

_"For now, precious…"_

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><p>It was three years later on her eighteenth birthday and she knew that he was still out there. She'd seen glimpses of him over the years—a flash of something wild and platinum here; small, skittering shadows there; an incomprehensible murmur over her ear every once in a while. She had quickly grown paranoid and tense, jumping at the slightest of things. Her father and Karen put her on anxiety pills, took her to psychologists, even going so far as to drug her food with a tranquilizer once.<p>

She didn't eat for a week after that (_memory_) incident.

Worst of all were the dreams. Pure, unending darkness, murmuring in a language she didn't know, but could just make out the vicious promises behind the muttering words. She woke up screaming in the night at least once a month. Her eyes were always shadowed, and staying awake in class had proven nigh impossible.

Toby, now in kindergarten, had come up to her, beaming proudly. She smiled down at her (_wished away_) brother. "Sarah," he said excitedly, lisping slightly on the _r_, "I made a friend!"

"Really?" she asked, smiling down at him. He nodded, his shaggy blonde hair falling into his pale eyes. "Who?"

"Jareth!" Everything went cold at that moment for her. Forcing herself to keep the sickly sweet smile on (_not him, not him, never him, banished him, beat him, saved Toby_) for her brother's sake, Sarah spoke, her voice just barely quivering.

"What did you say, sweetie?"

"Jared!" repeated Toby rapturously. " Jared King. He was funny."

Sarah released a shaky breath. So paranoid (_for so good reasons..._). Toby began bounding away, but not before he said another terrible thing: "He said he liked mazes. La- la- lawinths or somethin'. Said cruel people get put in ob-lets, too."

_"Your eyes can be so cruel..."_

Later that night, after the celebrations and "_Happy Birthday_"-ing, Sarah retired to her room, exhausted and thinking nothing of lawinths or ob-lets or friends of Toby's with the name Jare(_th_)d. At leas, not until she saw the crystal.

It was so startlingly bright against the dark background of her vanity that it blinded her momentarily. Her breath hitching in her throat, she saw a letter next to it, written in dark ink on heavy parchment. Moving slowly, and careful not to touch the crystal or the paper, she read it.

_Sarah,_

_Thought you might like a temporary reprieve from the nightmares._

_- Jareth_

_P.S.- Happy birthday, precious_

She didn't dare touch it, but the tantalizing idea of a night or two without terrors was almost too good to pass up. Yet... she'd played this game before. Nothing came without costs, (n_ot even peaches), _and so she stiffened her spine and turned away from the glowing object.

"You have no power over me," she stated determinedly into the shadows. As her head fell onto the pillow, exhaustion-induced sleep claiming her almost instantaneously, she heard low, cold laughter and the Voice again.

_"Your decision, precious..."_

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><p><em>Running from a foe she couldn't see, hearing a mocking voice she couldn't understand, she ignored the stings of the branches. The unintelligible voice only grew louder and more confusing the farther she went, and the darkness pressed down cruelly on her. <em>

_Finally, after a short eternity - for forever was not long at all - passed, the voice grew familiar, and spoke words she could understand._

_"Fear is power, you know," he said in an off-hand manner. "You most certainly fear me... so does that not mean I have power over you?" The darkness seemed to giggle at his words, and it pressed down harder on her, filling her head with singing as she struggled to not stop (_because she had a time limit, and he'd already stolen hours right off the clock before sending the Cleaners after her) _and to just keep going _(and Hoggle had said she'd gotten his attention, and they'd almost died)_ and to save not a baby, but herself._

_She shook her head and tried to ignore the happy darkness and the king. Wherever he was, he easily kept pace with her. "You have no power over me," she stated like a mantra. "No... power."_

_He laughed then, and she stopped running as he materialized before her, black armored and wild-haired. Fangs glistened as he grinned at her. _

_"Dearest Sarah," he crooned, tilting her chin up with one gloved finger. "I've _always _had power over you."_

_She screamed and he laughed, and she was still screaming when she woke up.  
><em>

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><p>"Let me sleep."<p>

She was twenty-four, and he was in her apartment kitchen, leaning against the wall next to the refrigerator (_so out-of-place, so unworthy of the Goblin King)_. A choked laugh escaped her from where she perched upon a bar stool at the small island that was the only thing separating them. His timing was immaculate. Her roommate would be gone for a week because her father had died a few days ago and she had to help with the funeral.

(_She remembered Toby's lost battle with leukemia, and her father's fatal car crash, and Karen's subsequent suicide._)

"Please," she said when the laughter died down (_like everything else_), "please, let me sleep."

This wasn't the first time they'd interacted since her eighteenth birthday. This wasn't normal sleep they spoke of anymore.

("_To die would be an awfully big adventure," she'd quoted Peter Pan. He had frowned before saying, "You've had enough adventures," while gently but quickly taking the reddened knife out of her shaking hand..._)

"Never," he said coolly, arms still crossed on his chest. She swallowed a sob before looking down at her pale fingers, before twisting her hands palms-upward to see the slashes.

("_Never go across the road," the boy with dyed black hair and eye shadow had laughed. "Across just makes you feel a little better, a temporary reprieve. Not what you need, cheri, not anymore. Go up, and you'll feel better than you have felt in a long_ _time."_)

She snorted at him, finally meeting his brown-and-blue eyed gaze. "And you call _me _cruel."

He didn't even flinch. "You are cruel," he said smoothly. "Very cruel, to threaten such a thing. Do you have _any_ idea how difficult it is to turn back time in your world?" A pause. "I'd arrived five minutes too late."

Her breath stuck in her throat, and a wave of guilt passed through her. He was still terrifying, still evil, still a baby-snatching monster, but he spoke to her on the occasions they met. He drank sparkling wine with her on the New Year's before her whole family died. He'd let her cry on his shoulder after the funeral. At the same time, though, Sarah had once caught him burning letters that her mother had sent her asking for her to visit (_and for a "small loan" from what she'd gotten from the first will..._) her in Hollywood and to "meet your new stepfather, Jeremy. We got married two days ago."

Written three days after her own father had died, and the day Linda no-longer-Williams had learned over a phone call what had befallen her ex-husband. Karen hadn't noticed a thing. Sarah didn't think she'd noticed anything after that, not even when she joined her son and husband three weeks later.

Jareth burned the next round of letters after that, too. And stopped her from taking the calls her mother sent her, and deleted the e-mails for her.

Sarah said nothing for a bit, content to stay curled on the stool and look back down at the shiny island, and notice where sparkles dotted it from when he'd popped in.

(_"I didn't invite you," she had stated boldly the first time he'd visited her. "I am not a vampire, Sarah," he had said in return. "I do not need an invitation - I just like to have one. Rather rude to barge in without it, you know.")_

"... you were smiling," he added after her silence became too much, his tone bitter. "You were dead, and you were _smiling_." He glared at her fully now, something like hatred and something not quite hatred glinting in his eyes.

(_There's a fine line between love and hate...__)_

"I'm sorry," she whispered, her green eyes not daring to meet his mismatched ones. He spat some curse in a language she'd never heard of before stalking over and slamming his fists onto the island counter.

"I ought to just have you thrown in an oubliette," he threatened. "I really should. Have you thrown in one and forgotten forever!" For a moment his left hand clenched and his other made a jerky movement to the direction of her throat. Sarah didn't flinch. He'd been mad at her before, and made the same strange movements each time he was truly angry.

"But -" He had relaxed now, and was standing straight and regal (_so different from her, curled and pathetic_). "I will not. Instead, I have gift for you, Sarah Williams." His right hand twirled and with his left index finger he tilted her chin up to look at a crystal. He smiled wickedly as her face paled and she jerked away from his finger.

"No," she said hoarsely. He shook his wild-haired head.

"You didn't even let me even make the proposition," he admonished her. She shook her head stubbornly. He sighed. "It's a crystal, nothing more. But if you turn it _this _way..." Another pause of his. "If you turn it this way, you'll forget. No more pain. No more sadness."

(_No more me having to bring you back from the dead..._)

"The catch?" she whispered.

"You start over... in the Underground." He shrugged. "Stay and remember and be miserable; or leave and forget and be happy. The choice is yours."

_Stay and remember and be miserable; or leave and forget and be happy._

"That'd be dishonoring them," she stalled weakly. "To forget them. Act like they never existed."

"As is trying so desperately to join them, but you try that, as well."

"Karen committed suicide." He'd let her cry on his shoulder after that one, too.

"Yes, but you are _Sarah_. 'Dangers untold and hardships unnumbered?' This has been a whole new adventure, my dear, and this is a whole new prize." She closed her eyes for a moment, memories returning unbidden.

_Toby in the hospital bed, Karen, Sarah, and Robert clustered around him for his last birthday celebration._

_Her father and Karen's wedding._

_Seeing Toby for the first time after he'd been born._

_The crazy party after she'd beaten the Labyrinth, and the glimpse of an owl outside her window..._

_Smiling, laughing, crying, yelling, screaming, and talking with the Goblin King..._

She opened her eyes and looked once more down at the crystal.

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><p>Officer Richard only half-listened as Terri Halls stuttered out her statement. Sarah Williams had been gone from her apartment for a week and a half, and no one had heard from her since.<p>

"Uh huh," he said as she recounted Sarah's lack of friends, of how she rarely did more go to class and come back home. "Yeah. Uh huh. She have a boyfriend or anythin'?"

"Y-yeah," Terri gasped out in between her sobs. "S-some rocker guy. Wild, p-platinum hair, and his eyes we-were different colors. One blue, the other b-brown." Richard frowned before looking up at the hysterical girl.

"His name?" he snapped out.

"J-Jared. Jared King."

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><p><strong>AN: **And they all fall down. Well, at least in my mind. Don't worry about what that means, it isn't impotant.

Review, dear Laby-lovers, review. I do so _love _the feedback I get after I write dark stories. Always so interesting and... creative.


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